A brigadier general in the New Jersey Militia during the American Civil War, he served as Secretary of the Navy, appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant, from 1869 to 1877.

Robeson was the subject of two Congressional investigations in 1876 and 1878 on profiting and bribery charges from shipbuilding contracts but was exonerated for lack of material evidence.

Defeated from office by Democrat Thomas M. Ferrell in a bitter highly contested 1882 election campaign, Robeson was left $60,000 in debt and forced to sell his Washington D.C. property.

[8] President Ulysses S. Grant, without public knowledge, appointed George M. Robeson Secretary of the Navy on June 25, 1869, having replaced Sec.

[12] According to historian Paullin, Robeson, however, after his appointment in June 1869, assumed strong leadership of the department, and Porter's dogmatic control immediately ended.

[10] During the Reconstruction Era, Secretary of the Navy Robeson arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, on November 1, 1870, and he was saluted by naval warships in the harbor.

[14] Robeson, in his scholarly way, on the steps of the Norfolk City Hall, spoke on the Republican Party's achievements of successfully defeating the Southern Rebellion; ending the "barbarism of slavery"; elevating millions of African American freedmen by giving them citizenship, full suffrage and education; completing the Pacific Railroad; reducing taxes, and paying off the Civil War debt.

[14] The Polaris expedition, commissioned by Secretary of Navy Robeson, was the United States' first serious attempt at arctic exploration to be the first nation to reach the North Pole.

On June 29, 1871, at 7 pm, USS Polaris, sailed from the New York Naval Yard, under the authority of Captain Charles Francis Hall.

In October 1871, the expedition established a winter camp on Thank God Bay, to prepare to reach the North Pole by dogsled.

[19] On June 2, 1872, after an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole, the expedition turned south to head back to the New York Navy Yard.

In 1968, Captain Hall's body was exhumed and modern scientific testing revealed he had been poisoned by arsenic before his sudden sickness and death.

[25] Intelligent Whale, an experimental hand-cranked submarine owned by Oliver Halstead, had been semi-officially successfully tested in 1866 by Thomas W. Sweeny.

Because of lax security, in 1872, British officer Rear Admiral Edward Augustus Inglefield sneaked into the New York Navy Yard and inspected the secluded vessel moored on a wharf.

[27] In the summer of 1872, inventor-entrepreneur John L. Lay's self-propelled remote control torpedo test proved a success for the Bureau of Ordnance.

USS Intrepid was the first U.S. steam-powered projectile torpedo ship, built seven years before the British HMS Polyphemus, which was roughly of similar design and purpose.

On October 31, 1873, a Spanish warship, Toronado, ran down and captured Virginius, a U.S. merchant ship that was smuggling in weapons and soldiers to aid Cuba's revolt from the mother country Spain.

Congress, however, refused to make new ships, believing that the technologically revolutionary ironclads made ten years ago somehow remained modern and were good enough for the U.S.

Robeson ordered five double-turreted (rotating deck guns) warships on June 23, 1874, to implement U.S. naval resurgence; all participated in the Spanish–American War, which started in 1898.

Both houses overwhelming approved the bill, believing it would bring relief, to a cash-depleted nation, expecting Grant, to quickly sign it.

The controversy centered around Robeson wanting to have Senator A.G. Cattell appointed financial agent in London to negotiate a bond issue.

Bristow told Grant that Robeson's Navy Department was financially mismanaged, and was under the control of former treasury secretary Hugh McCulloch's banking house.

Concerning the five double-turreted monitors that Robeson had designed and ordered over a year ago in June 1874, he pressed Congress for funding to complete the ships.

[43] A July 1876 Congressional investigation run by the Democratic House, revealed that Robeson deposited $320,000 in his bank account, well above his $8,000 yearly salary, from 1872 to 1876.

[43] Cattell's books upon investigation were found to be in disorder, and there was no direct evidence linking Robeson to kickbacks or the purchase of the Long Branch cottage.

Robeson had run a "system of corruption" and recommended that he either be impeached by the House Judiciary Committee or that reform laws be made by Congress.

As a result of the election loss, Robeson moved from Camden to Trenton and established a law practice, having been induced to represent the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

In less than one year after Robeson's death, the five requisitioned warships he ordered in September 1874 fought or served in active duty during the Spanish–American War, which started in April 1898.

"[58] In 2016, historian Ronald C. White said Robeson "was a handsome, jovial man but was portrayed on the Washington social circuit as a "first-rate judge of wine, a second-rate trout fisherman, and a third-rate New Jersey lawyer."

"[59] In 2017, historian Ron Chernow said Robeson was a "roly-poly Princeton graduate with muttonchop whiskers and a sociable bent, who had been a brigadier general in the war.